The Lineamientos, having been debated throughout the provinces, resulted in a final version editorially massaged with some deletions and additions that was adopted by the Cuban Communist Party (PCC). While the acknowledgement that reform is called for and the effort to produce the guidelines themselves are laudable, the document that was approved is largely disappointing […]

One might argue that a disproportionate amount of research examining the tepid market reforms in post- Soviet Cuba emphasizes the island’s second economy (Pérez-López 1995), cuentapropistas (Peters and Scarpaci, 1998) and related gray areas of commerce and consumption (Weinreb, 2009). A paradigmatic assumption driving this research is that the ever-resourceful Cuban will make ends meet […]

Sugar exports is the most promising financial activity in the future in Cuba. —G.B. Hagelberg1 The resurgence of Cuba’s sugarcane industry in Cuba from its present abyss will be a contest for capital. Capital will flow to where it will have the most beneficial short-term impact: to the fields, to mechanization, to the mill. Can […]

This paper looks at the past, present and future of the Internet in Cuba.1 At the dawn of the Internet, Cuba led the Caribbean in computer networking and was well positioned to continue to lead. But the Cuban Internet stagnated due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. embargo, and the “dictator’s dilemma”—a […]